in this video we will finish our discussion on the ancient Greek theater we're going to do so by discussing the Greek playwrights and I'll start off with the very first playwright that ever won the city Dionysia if you remember the city Dionysia was the the playwriting competition featured every March at the festival honoring Dionysus to allow these playwrights to show off their work compete with one another for a coveted prize and the very first playwright to win the city Dionysia was a man named Thespis th e SP is Thespis now we get the word thespian from the word from the name Thespis if you've heard the thespian society that's like a an Actors Guild that's like a you know if it's the society that actors performers who portray dialog on stage belong to they're often referred to themselves refer to themselves as a thespian and that name came about to honor the very first playwright to ever win city Dionysia why because I'll tell you the truth about Festivus even though he won the festival he wasn't known as one of the great writers of ancient Greece that's and there's a reason for that but Thespis his work it isn't work that we usually study a whole lot in colleges and universities so why is it important to bring him up Thespis introduced a leader to the chorus so you have a chorus who's like of course members who you know I don't know how large the courses or say a hundred members large is something like this maybe fifty I think is the number and he gave us a leader someone who stood aside from all the rest who sang and chanted and this leader delivered dialogue he was the one that I talked about in the last video that would deliver dialogue where the chorus responded and chant so now all of a sudden Thespis has given us the first Greek actor that person who spoken dialogue was the first Greek actor and that's why the acting society known as the thespian society honors this man with their name so he introduced the leader to the chorus with a leader being the first actor and I would also say that was Thespis who introduced the use of masks to establish character the big masks that I talked about with the expression denoting a character station in life and their emotion and that sort of things so even though his storylines work among the best it was he Thespis that started the evolution into theatrical production as we know it today you know if you were to ride in a Dodge Viper it'd be a much better experience than a Model T and if someone were to say well which is the greater invention the Model T or the Viper you know that's debatable for obvious reasons Thespis kind of provided the Model T wasn't the best ride but without it we wouldn't have all the wonderful stuff that came afterwards so asbestos who introduced the use of masks what I want to move into now would be the three great writers of tragedy that developed during the Golden Age of Greece these are the three big writers that we hear about most in our literature classes and our drama classes and so forth and I'll start with the first one his name was Aeschylus Aeschylus AES chy lus Aeschylus he was deemed to be the father of tragedy that's what we that's how we refer to him by today's standards the father of tragedy many scholars everything that I'm talking about now with these guys would be debatable of course for obvious reasons but there are many who think that Aeschylus was the greatest tragic writer the greatest tragic poet of all time for some reason you always have to get background Meishan on these guys and i think the reason for that even though this is how long it has anything to do with righty the purpose for giving you their background information is to give you their frame of reference what about young the world experience that they might have had that allowed them to write put together such good stories he was rugged he was a fighter he was a warrior he fought as a wire in the Battle of Marathon and he frequently participated in city Dionysia the playwriting festival as a matter of fact Aeschylus won the city Dionysia contests 13 times so that's 13 years that he won and there were several other years when he did not Aeschylus was the playwright who invented the trilogy all right and in so doing he introduced the second actor to the Greek theater stage now why is that important now we have the beginnings of a play an actual play not just song and chant you know Thespis gives us the first actor now we have a second actor and we can have confrontation we see a confrontation and conflict taking place between these two characters now this is why his work was considered to be so much better than that of Thespis is because he provided that second the actor we have protagonist and the antagonist with their dilemma unfolding right before our very eyes Aeschylus did something else he reduced the chorus from 50 there and I lost that number while ago from 50 members to 12 so we are starting to see a much bigger emphasis being put on the actor and less on the singers less on the chorus and it happened with those two playwrights Thespis and Aeschylus Aeschylus love spectacle meaning all things that were seen when he did a show he wanted the story being told by a lot of visual as well his plays abounded with spectacle as a matter of fact Aeschylus is the person who the playwright who gave us the reason for the very first stunt person stuntman back in the day it was a man he had an actor or a stuntman in place of the actor playing the Great God prometheus fall to his death off of a cliff so they had a big cliff on the rocks you know in the vicinity of the the orchestra and the vicinity of the amphitheatre and of course it was somebody dressed up like the actor playing Prometheus and he fell to his death and it was cheesy by today's standard the guy fell and he fell behind some other barriers rocks or something into a padded surface and it wasn't that big of a deal but at that time it was nobody had ever witnessed anything like that make gasp and lost their breath and then once they realized it was part of the story they applauded so yeah Aeschylus gave us a lot in the way of spectacle in the way a visual if there was a legend about him that his masks were so frightening them you know again these people they just write the play they created a lot of the imagery as well as masked were so frightening that women and children fainted I can't imagine that but that's the that's the legend and like everyone else in the ancient days of Greece Aeschylus did accept the concept of the gods and predestination philosophy that the gods had already put forth fate for Humanity for each man and Wallis plays did represent the belief in the gods and their fate and he presented it with dignity and simplicity he still in his place was the first to give human beings some sense of their own responsibility you know you know if you're gonna die you're gonna die that's what they would believe you know the gods had to create this fate upon you but Aeschylus and his placement say yeah if there's a boulder running down the top of this hill you do have the choice to get out of the way if you don't you're stupid you can't move out of the way he put a little bit of that responsibility on man and all of a sudden we start to have the beginnings of the questioning of predestination he wrote 90 plays and of the 90 plays only seven are still in existence the second great playwright of the Golden Age of Greece was Sophocles s OPH o SC I'm sorry sop h o CL e s Sophocles his background he was handsome don't know that that had to do with playwriting he was very well-educated they had a lot of other talents as well Sophocles was a musician he was a singer and he was one of ancient Greeks greatest athletes so he had a wide background from which to draw and writing his stories as well also he was involved in civic affairs he ran for office he eventually became the treasurer of Athens so he had that as part of his background to implement into his storylines as well Sophocles wrote over 100 scripts and he actually won the city Dionysia playwriting festival or playwriting contest 18 times his biggest contribution and it was a big one he introduced the third actor to the great stage so guess what we don't normally have an actor that Thespis gave us and conflict which ESCO has provided we have intrigued because you know think of it this way you have two people in a room and they're fighting with each other one's gonna win one's gonna lose end of story but if there's a third person involved and let's say of the two in conflict the wrong one blames the other the third one has to become an arbitrator though don't believe him believe him he's lying he's lying no no don't believe him now all of a sudden because there was a third party a third actor on the stage of these storylines audiences had a greater degree of entry because they were now rooting for the third party to see it in the same light that we did as audience members I guess in a way the third actor gave a representation of the audience on the stage in the storyline so he introduced the third actor to the theater Sophocles plays were famous for his style of writing he had beautiful language his plot was very well balanced what that man was all this sidelined issues and a storyline seemed to fit equally and make up a whole and excellent character portrayal and it was the third actor that provided dance an excellent character portrayal for all three because now not only do we have fighting conflict confrontation we have persuasion and trying to win a third party over and therefore wonderful character portrayal and that's reasonably won that festival so many times a third actor became its most valuable tool today Sophocles work is considered by scholars to be the essence of Greek drama okay the third great playwright during this time of tragedy by the way I don't know if I established that or not but Aeschylus Sophocles and the third one Euripides were all tragic playwrights they wrote tragedy so the third one is your rivet easy you are IPI des another great writer of tragedy he was a boxer he was very good at boxing but it was also an artist he was very good at painting and he was a recluse he secluded himself and he he confined himself to a cave that was overlooking the sea that a lot of people couldn't find back in his day and couldn't find four century to follow where he hid and did all of his writing about 15 years or so ago a sea level dropped at a certain point and this cave was discovered you always heard about this and scholarly discussions it's awesome when those scholar scholarly discussions turn out to be true it's kind of like finding the Titanic the bottom of the ocean yes this really did happen well that cave does exist and they discovered it within the last two decades he would do most of his writing in a secret cave he was considered to be the first modern the quote-unquote first modern why because Europe ADIZ was an unorthodox thinker for that time period he he didn't he didn't write plays according to tradition and religious philosophy as a matter of fact he questioned the very traditional religious ideas he questioned the existence of the gods was kind of a highly controversial thing to do at that time so he he wrote about things that dealt more with people then then deities I he was a strong advocate and actually the first advocate for women's rights he saw an equality that didn't exist of course he still cast men only in his shows but in his storylines he would advocate for women's rights you would see that a lot in his plays he was the first one to humanize drama with little household details such as the ones that take place in our own home squabble squabbling between the husband and wife and kids who didn't clean up and all of these kind of things and those storylines really appealed to the mindset and the emotions of the audience they liked audience members for the first time saw stories about themselves and they really loved seeing that and that's what made you remedies very very popular his best-known play I guess would be Madea I was about the about anguish and jealousy and inside of a person a normal person rather than that of a god now besides those three great writers of tragedy you know Aeschylus Sophocles and Euripides and of course Thespis who stands out on his own there were two highly notable writers of comedy that existed during the ancient Greek period and they were Aristophanes a or I sto pH a nd s Aristophanes and Menander any in a in de are not a whole lot to say about these two guys Aristophanes was considered at that time to be the greatest comedic writer of ancient Greece they thought he was we we might argue that today but during his time Aristophanes was considered the greatest comedic writer he wrote about Athenian life he wrote about government he wrote satires mainly he poked fun at government and politics and religion and you know high-ranking officials and establishment and things like that and that was so very important to the ancient Greeks that's probably why they considered him the greater of these two comedic writers however Menander unlike Aristophanes wrote on social aspects Menander in a comedic way was kind of like your Ripa DS was in a tragic way Menander made fun of domestic life or private life made fun of families made fun of bosses and their employees and once again audiences like the laugh at this themselves by today's standard we might argue that Menander was the greatest comedic playwright of the ancient greek period we might even argue that he was the biggest influence on modern-day comedy any sitcom that you watched today sounds very familiar with seems an incumbent movie that you watch today are very consistent with his themes stand-up comics in a bar in a comedy club tell jokes that are very consistent with men Anders themes because he poked fun at domestic life in private life he always was the first one to figure out that we would laugh at those concepts things like cunning servants you know the slaves that are pulling the wool over the Masters eyes are the little people getting one over on them on the political figures we laugh at that you know we still do today nagging relatives like a nagging mother-in-law or a worthless brother-in-law often these things were in his stories protective fathers he found out that in real life we protected a father's are on the verge of a stroke 24/7 but we also like to laugh at ourselves in a comedy and it was Menander who discovered that and his biggest theme probably was young love he found out that there was nothing funnier than the awkwardness of young lovers people in fall over the first time and have the awkwardness of trying to you know a first kiss or asking for a date same jokes are told today now they find comedians and comedic playwrights and comedic screenwriters stand-up comedians they find a sneaky way to deliver an age-old punchline but it's the same punch line it's the same comedic subject matter that Menander gave us way back in the day so these two playwrights Aristophanes and Menander should be recognized the sad part of it all is their work usually wasn't considered art like the treaded tragedies were they were just barely considered entertainment and they weren't competitive for their work their work was just there to provide the audiences with a good time thank you